A 1776 first edition of Adam Smith’s …Wealth of Nations was discovered by a Hansons (20% buyer’s premium) specialist during the last minutes of cataloguing for an October contents sale at Staffordshire country house Bishton Hall.
The family was aware of its existence somewhere in the home but had been unable to pinpoint its whereabouts. The bindings of full contemporary calf were somewhat worn and scuffed, and in the second volume a few pages had been bound in the wrong order (as acknowledged in a contemporary footnote), but essentially it was a good, clean example of this famous economic text.